


Poke Wars

by ellebow



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebow/pseuds/ellebow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark and Eduardo communicated through poking. It was only natural that Mark would implement a ‘poke feature’ even after Eduardo sued him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poke Wars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/gifts).



> Dedicated to my friend Bryn, who even drew this awesome fanart for it: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_men2fjB2q41qcbmx1.png

It all started late one night in Kirkland. The blue glow of Mark’s computer screen cast his face with a sickly cerulean wash, the only source of light in the dim dorm room that smelled faintly of Easy Mac and cheap beer. He lay sprawled on his narrow bed, fingers flying across the keyboard with his brows furrowed in intense concentration, music blaring through clunky black headphones. Mark’s stomach growled and he ignored it as he’d been doing for the past twenty hours.

A finger prodded his ribs and he yelped, pulling down his headphones and whirling around to face a laughing Eduardo. “The hell?” he snapped, rubbing his side.

Unfazed, Eduardo just smiled wider and held up the charger for Mark’s laptop. “I’m cutting you off, dude. You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.” He poked Mark again, this time in the shoulder. “Finals are coming up soon, and we can’t have you collapsing in the middle of an exam.”

Mark glared and muttered something about not needing to be awake to pass most of his finals, but then he glanced down at the battery icon on his laptop and groaned. Just 3% remaining. “Dammit, Wardo,” he grumbled, but shut his laptop and crawled out of bed. 

Eduardo dragged Mark to the Starbucks across the street. Even though it was nearing three in the morning, several people sat hunched over their textbooks and laptops with oversized drinks clutched in their hands. He pointed to the menu with a meaningful glance at Mark, who sighed and ordered a sandwich and a muffin. 

“Happy now?” Mark crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

“Yes,” Eduardo replied, an angelic smile on his face. He poked Mark again, a little gentler this time, on the hip. 

Mark jumped and shied away, practically girding his loins. “Stop it,” he half-laughed, struggling to keep from returning Eduardo’s infectious smile.

 

The frequency of Eduardo’s poking gradually increased without Mark really noticing. Soon it went from the occasional nudge to surprise tickle-fights, which always seemed to end in Mark shrieking and narrowly avoiding kicking Eduardo in the face. It’s not like he wouldn’t deserve it if he _did_ get kicked in the face, though. Tickle fights are dangerous and totally uncalled for, as Mark pointed out to Eduardo on one of these occasions.

“But they’re _fun_ , Mark,” he pleaded, eyes going huge and round as saucers. Eduardo grinned. “You’re obviously a fun-sucker. You _suck fun_." 

Mark’s eyes dropped to Eduardo’s lips for a moment and then quickly darted away. He swallowed and swore he could feel his heartbeat in his wrist, his ribs, in every spot Wardo had poked him.

“I am not responsible for any physical harm I cause you in self-defense, Wardo,” he warned, completely straight-faced. And then he poked Eduardo right in the stomach.

“Oh, it’s _on_ ,” Wardo growled, his wide grin threatening to split his face in half, and retaliated with a series of rapid thrusts to Mark’s torso.

They laughed until Dustin poked his head out of his room and yelled, “Keep it down out there, you hyenas!”

Which of course only set them off more.

 

The night Erica Albright dumped Mark, Eduardo restrained himself from poking Mark for two weeks, until Mark finally jabbed him in the side one night in a fit of drunken frustration and the tradition started back up again.

 

At four in the morning in early December, Eduardo plodded into Kirkland sopping wet, shivering like mad, and buried himself in a cocoon of blankets. Mark found him huddled on the couch with blue lips.

“What the fuck happened to you, Wardo?” he demanded, laying a hand on his friend’s forehead and hissing when it came into contact with what felt like cold, slippery ice.

Wardo smiled sheepishly through his chattering teeth. “The Ph-Ph-Phoenix . . . new p-p-pledges had to . . . swim in T-T-Tanner F-Fountain,” he wheezed, shivering.

Scowling, Mark gripped Eduardo’s hands in his and rubbed them, trying to generate some warmth. When that didn’t seem to work, he tried blowing on them, hoping Wardo couldn’t smell the Cheez-its on his breath. He glanced up and blinked at Eduardo’s pained expression.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, confused.

Eduardo turned crimson to match his t-shirt and Mark could have sworn his temperature went up several degrees. He refused to meet Mark’s gaze for the rest of the night, even when Mark poked him in the foot to make sure he was still breathing.

 

When FaceMash crashed the Harvard servers, Eduardo celebrated by giving Mark a bear hug and stealthily prodding him in the upper thigh. High on his victory, Mark smiled and tickled the vulnerable spot where Wardo’s neck met his jaw. The high-pitched whine Wardo emitted made Mark’s blood rush southward, and he pointedly looked away, hot with shame.

 

The idea for Facebook kept Mark awake for days at a time, with few breaks for sustenance. Eduardo was always at hand, bringing him ramen noodles and reminding him to go to class (he usually didn’t go anyway). Occasionally Wardo would introduce his presence to the intensely focused Mark by poking him in the back, but by the time Mark looked up, he would be nowhere in sight. It soon became a game of theirs, which Eduardo dubbed “Ninja Poker,” trying to poke each other and disappear before the other had time to notice. Because Mark was always distracted by coding, Eduardo usually won.

 

The night TheFacebook finally went live, Wardo drank too much and kissed Mark full on the mouth, wet and fast and urgent with far too much tongue. The adrenaline high kept Mark from overthinking it, and he returned the kiss eagerly. Their surroundings faded away and Wardo pushed Mark into a wall, grabbing the back of his neck and moaning into his mouth as he ground his hips desperately into Mark’s. 

“ _Jesus_ , Mark,” Wardo gasped, his voice catching in his throat as he licked a stripe up Mark’s jaw.

“That’s blasphemy, Wardo, we’re Jewish,” Mark choked out in response, his fingers tangling in Wardo’s sweater.

Eduardo laughed and nuzzled Mark’s neck.

Mark, idiot that he was, decided it would be cute to poke Wardo’s cheek as they kissed.

Unfortunately, that simple jab catapulted Eduardo back into reality. His eyes widened and he pushed Mark back, gaping. “Oh shit, oh shit ohshitohshit,” he breathed shakily, backing away.

Hurt (and also a little drunk), Mark drew his eyebrows together. “What’s wrong?”

Eduardo swallowed. “I, uh—I’m so sorry, Mark, but I have to go.”

“But—” Mark tried to pull Wardo back to him.

“Like, now,” Wardo blurted, sidestepping Mark’s embrace and practically running to the door.

Stunned, Mark hugged his stomach and sat down on the couch, watching numbly as the people surrounding him obliviously drank and danced and kissed.

 

After the drunken kissing incident, Eduardo acted like nothing had changed—maybe poking Mark a little less often than before, but outright refusing to acknowledge that anything had happened even when Mark tried bringing it up.

Eventually, Mark buried his hurt feelings and decided to ignore it, as well.

 

Soon, with TheFacebook starting to really pick up, Mark and Eduardo spent much less time alone together. Gone were the long nights of Mark coding while Eduardo did homework and kept him from starving. Gone were the constant poke wars and tickle fights. Now, they rarely had physical contact. 

Mark didn’t understand what was happening or why he and Eduardo were growing further and further apart. He never asked to watch his best friend slowly slip away, but he didn’t know what the problem was. He met up with Sean Parker often and the guy was a genius, but he made everything about to be a conspiracy and it made Mark anxious—well, more anxious than normal anyway.

Then Eduardo cut the funding for Facebook (it had been a good call on Sean’s part, to drop the ‘The’), and everything went to shit.

Mark was hurt, and confused, and angry, and he didn’t understand why Eduardo had to threaten the entire existence of his (their) fledgling company. He lashed out at Wardo, who stared at him like a baby deer whose mother had just been shot, wet and wide-eyed—don’t think about that night after The Phoenix, Mark, just _don’t_ —and his voice dripped with acid. Mark had never felt more bitter in his life.

That seemed to be the last straw when it came to Mark and Eduardo’s relationship.

Forget fewer poke wars, they never saw each other anymore and then all of a sudden Eduardo was suing Mark for millions of dollars—“you better _lawyer up_ , asshole”—and Mark just didn’t understand where it had all gone so absolutely _wrong._

 

And then one day, when Mark was sitting at his computer clutching a beer with white-knuckled hands, he had an idea. It was a simple, stupid idea, one that would make no actual difference to Facebook. Most people probably wouldn’t even use it as a feature.

But he had to put it in. For Wardo’s sake. For the sake of the friendship they had once shared.

So he opened up his laptop and started to code. 

The next day, the new feature went live.

 

“Hey Wardo, did you hear about that new Facebook feature?” asked Rachel, one of the interns at the business firm where Eduardo freelanced sometimes.

Eduardo flinched as he always did when someone mentioned Facebook, but he looked up from his desk and shook his head, always polite.

“Oh, well it’s so dumb,” she went on, shaking her head. “I have no idea why they decided to put it in. But it’s called the ‘Poke Feature.’”

Eduardo blinked and sat up a little straighter. “I’m sorry, what?”

Rachel didn’t seem to notice his sudden interest in the conversation and kept talking. “You can ‘poke’ someone over Facebook with the click of a button. No one understands why, but the person gets a notification that tells them that they’ve been poked by that person, and then they can poke back.” She shrugged. “It can go on forever, apparently. People have already started calling them ‘poke wars.’”

Eduardo sat there without speaking for several minutes before he appeared to reach a decision and rocketed up out of his chair. “Sorry, Rach,” he said, grabbing his suitcase. “Family emergency. Gotta go.”

 

When Eduardo burst into his Facebook office, Mark was fully expecting his laptop to get broken. Which would be a damn shame, because it was a nice piece of technology that he’d paid way too much for. But it would be worth it, if he could just talk to his former best friend for the first time in months. 

 “Just—please don’t say anything, Mark,” Eduardo said as soon as he walked in the door. “Just let me talk first.”

Mark closed his mouth and cocked his head.

“What the hell were you thinking, Mark? Putting that stupid ‘poke’ feature into Facebook? Were you trying to tell me something? Or were you just dredging up old wounds? You fucking _asshole_!” Eduardo ranted, pacing the floor of Mark’s office. 

He stepped close up to Mark, closer than he’d been since the night Facebook had first gone live. “Just _please_ tell me,” he breathed, his voice cracking on ‘please’, “that it wasn’t just a slap to my face, Mark." 

Mark grabbed Eduardo’s wrist in a firm grip. “Wardo, you fucking idiot,” he growled. “Do you really think _I_ ’ve been the one avoiding you for all this time?” He leaned in and gently pressed Eduardo’s mouth to his.

To his surprise, Eduardo didn’t pull away. Instead, he made a soft whimpering noise and leaned into the kiss, bunching his hands in Mark’s hoodie. “Christ, Mark,” he gasped out between kisses, “I missed you so fucking much.”

“Mmm.” Mark licked into Wardo’s mouth and ran his fingers through the gelled masterpiece that was Wardo’s hair. He poked Wardo in the stomach. “Blasphemy, remember?”

Wardo laughed into Mark’s mouth and he had never felt so warm.


End file.
